


I Am Weeping for My Darling Little Babe

by CenozoicSynapsid



Series: Purimgifts 2020 - A Demon Family [1]
Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child, The Daemon Lover | The House Carpenter - Anonymous (Song)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Demons, Exes, F/F, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22929604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenozoicSynapsid/pseuds/CenozoicSynapsid
Summary: I open the door and there’s nothing but a dry empty sound like spilled salt. I think for no reason at all of Lia. It’s a sign of demons, that sudden certainty. I can’t see her but I know.There’s a trick to seeing her. She’s been gone a long time.
Series: Purimgifts 2020 - A Demon Family [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647988
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4
Collections: Purimgifts 2020





	I Am Weeping for My Darling Little Babe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



Sometimes the _sitra achra_ , the other side, is very close to you, close as the word you’re just about to speak. Hot as lust in your blood, rank as sweat in your nostrils.

Other times, it’s very far away. Knowing it’s there, right there, all around you— that doesn’t help. You listen for the voices of demons, and you can almost hear them: whispering, laughing, tiny rasping sounds. Crickets in the basement. When you most of all need to know what they’re saying, that’s when you won’t be able to.

I open the door and there’s nothing but a dry empty sound like spilled salt. I think for no reason at all of Lia. It’s a sign of demons, that sudden certainty. I can’t see her but I know. Shimmering summer heat blasts into the house. Nobody is out there, not a bird, not a car.

There’s a trick to seeing her. She’s been gone a long time.

They like memories and daydreams, the demons. Lust and sweat. Old heirlooms, half-forgotten songs. I sing.

_Where have you been, my own true love,_  
_These seven long years and more?_

It’s awkward to start with. I’m self-conscious, standing in an open doorway singing a folk song, waiting for my voice to fit the tune. We sang when we went hiking, and she used to sing while she cooked, too, coriander and onions on the dorm room stovetop. I remember the smell, the sound, and I fall into the _sitra achra_ , the demon world, easy as breathing.

She’s changed and she hasn’t. Her soft black eyes have no whites, just pupil from rim to rim, and she stares me brazenly up and down. I look at her and away and back again. My eyes rest on her chapped lips, the color of banked embers, almost hot enough to burn if I reached out and ran my finger across them.

“Come in,” I say, and the song spools out in my head:

_I can’t come in, I can’t sit down, I haven’t a moment’s time_  
_They say you married a house carpenter, and now you’ll never be mine._

A pediatrician, actually. But we’re married, this is our house and we have an adorable five-year-old boy. All that stuff. Lia saunters over the threshold like she owns it, or is considering owning it.

“Sit down,” I say. “I’ll get you a drink.”

Two tall glasses of ice water sweat in my hands. I put down coasters to save the tabletop. Drain half of mine in a long, nervous swallow. I hope she doesn’t notice but I figure she does.

Of course it didn’t work out. We were young and stupid, the sex was great, the fights were brutal. She couldn’t hold a grudge and I could. Demons don’t eat or sleep the way people do; it’s all feast or famine with nothing in between. She’d pass on my cooking for three days straight, then make waffles on a Wednesday when I had a nine o’clock class. I couldn’t keep up and in the end I didn’t care.

“It’s good to see you,” I say.

“When we two parted,” she says, “In silence I met my old lover, still crazy after all these seven long years, I’m sorry, the echolalia thing, still a thing, it’s good to see you, it’s really good.”

She smiles uneasily and I realize some of the swagger is a coverup.

“How’s it going with you?”

“Y’know,” she says.

She launches into a story about job hunting and a flying rabbi and another, non-flying rabbi, but which turns out after a few minutes to be about her family.

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to but they had not sailed a mile, a mile, a mile but only one, when she began to weep and mourn and think on her little wee son. Family, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Family.”

“I’m trying to do better with that. It’s hard. Not to vanish and lose people you love.”

“Yeah?” My voice goes flat, which should warn her but doesn’t.

“It’s late, but it’s not too late,” she says, and she smiles.

“You have some nerve.”

I’m overreacting, I think. I don’t stop.

“We were girlfriends in college, okay? You don’t get to come into my house and tell me you want me back like some character from a ballad, who by the way goes to actual hell. If this is some bizarre demon thing—”

Her face moves: shock and then anger.

“Bizarre demon thing? You’re all, come in, have a glass of water, you may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife and you may ask yourself, why is your lawn so fucking perfect even though it’s dry as Gehenna out, and you’re so vain you probably think, but it really isn’t.”

I stand up off the couch, mirror her anger back at her.

“I’m not going with you. You have no right. I’ll get salt from the kitchen if I have to, I’ll recite the names of angels—”

She looks at me, head tilted. Those black eyes blink, those ember lips tighten. I’m crossing a line but she crossed first.

And then she looks over my shoulder, to the doorway.

“Come here,” she says, soft. Not to me. “It’ll be okay. We’ll go away from here.”

“Who are you talking to?”

My wife is at work. My son is at a friend’s house. My— and I remember just a minute ago, how I filled two glasses of ice water and a little plastic cup that I put down without thinking. I remember years of humming lullabies on long hot nights, folding tiny skirts without thinking about why I owned them, murmuring half-asleep words to a little cricket voice I couldn’t quite hear. It’s a sign of demons, that sudden certainty.

I lose the _sitra achra_ again, just like that, and I don’t see them go away: Lia, and our— oh god— our daughter.

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't quite the set of stories I meant to write... let's just say the plot bunnies carried me off to Elfland at an unexpected time, and I sincerely hope you like what I came back with.
> 
> Songfic has to have a playlist, right? The Demon Lover/House Carpenter has a huge performance tradition including pretty much all the big names. I like these versions by [Steeleye Span](https://youtu.be/71-qtH9LTjQ) and [The Mammals](https://youtu.be/-Ju5iArQRVE).


End file.
